darling, you're still divine
by Her Name Is Erika
Summary: They're still Jim and Margaret Anderson to the end. / Or, in which Billy Abbott realizes how lucky he is. BillyVictoria.


**darling, you're still divine  
show:** Young & the Restless  
**central character(s):** Billy Abbott, Victoria Newman  
**summary: **They're still Jim and Margaret Anderson to the end. / Or, in which Billy Abbott realizes how lucky he is. BillyVictoria.  
**notes:** I just wanted to write something short and sweet—with a pinch of angst because this is from Billy's POV when he still has conflicted feelings over Myanmar. This is set during the Christmas wedding, post-Myanmar thing. I had way too fun much writing it. I still heart this couple to pieces. The withdrawals are like, giving me to the shakes and makes me itch. Figuratively. I DEMAND Billy & Victoria SEXY TIME. Like yesterday.  
**disclaimer:** nope. It's not mine, and frankly this show is going to hell. Oh, and title belongs to Ok Go, from their song, "You're So Damn Hot". And I listened to "Oh, Darling", by the Beatles, too.

* * *

_Sight_

.

Delia looks way too pretty for a flower girl. His little girl is happy and healthy with the Abbott twinkle in her eyes and Billy is beyond grateful.

Then Billy sees Victoria, beaming at him as she enters the Chancellor living room in her bright red matron of honour dress. He thinks (note: he absolutely knows because Victoria is still his girl) she looks freaking hot and well, like she's the one getting married.

"Well, how do I look?"

Everyone takes in the dress and the occasion: that there's a wedding and really, Billy is okay with Kevin being Delia's stepfather. He and Kevin are Sorta Civil and ever possibly Friends, depending on the day, or the Mood.

But really, Billy finds out all of his attention diverted to Victoria and she blushes.

"Like the day I married you."

She smiles, just for him, "Thank you."

* * *

_Hearing_

.

So, Chloe and Kevin's Christmas wedding actually turns out to be The Wedding that Never Happened.

He kinda wants to throttle Kevin for this – even though Billy's pot is as black as Kevin's kettle.

.

It sucks watching Chloe's heart get broken, considering Billy knows he's responsible for one of many Chloe's broken hearts. He can't help but glance up and God is sneaky and underhanded, but this is the sign Billy's hoping for, so he'll take it.

So, he asks Chloe because he wouldn't ask anyone else in this type of situation. Chloe smiles, tears in her eyes and nods yes. She gives her blessings through a smile that he knows is sad. They're not married anymore and yeah, they actually get along quite well as Delia's parents.

He leans over, gives Chloe a grateful kiss on the cheek. He's grateful for her to giving him the opportunity to marry Victoria again. But Billy's also thankful to Chloe because he gets a letter from his lawyer, stating that Chloe is willing to share joint custody of Dee Dee with him again.

"I owe you one, don't I?"

Chloe smiles and playfully nudges him. She has to smile or she's going to cry. Delia can't see that.

"Yes, you do. Now, go make Victoria your wife," she pauses, with a light-hearted laugh. "Again."

Yeah, because the first time, he and Vicki are drunk. The second time, Billy kind of blows it. And this is his do-over moment – even when he's a screw up and has tendencies to mess up and mess up bad. But all three times, Billy loves Victoria. He hugs Chloe lightly again, and yeah, she's isn't going to let the fact that he owes her go – but it's worth it.

.

Yep, it's totally kismet. The Universe is giving Billy the green light to make Victoria his wife.

He hears The Big Guy, loud and clear.

Figuratively, of course because Billy's not insane.

(Third time's the charm, baby.)

* * *

_Touch_

.

"There was a girl," Billy starts, because she deserves the truth. "In Myanmar."

He watches Victoria inhale and then exhale. She glances at him, "I told you I didn't want to know," she shakes her head, and Billy almost feels like she should be mad at him. "As long as you didn't fall in love with her – "

"I didn't. I can't do when I'm already in love with my wife." That's the honesty to God truth. Billy can't love a girl who is blip in his life, compared to Victoria who makes such an impact on his life and can't imagine life without her, now. "I love you. I never loved her."

"Okay," Victoria says with a half-smile along with a light chuckle. She reaches out and takes his hand, interlocking the fingers. "Then it doesn't matter."

He misses touching his wife (to hell with technicalities), so he leans over and kisses her. She kisses him back, hands under the scruff of both his cheeks and whispers, "Don't ever leave," against his lips.

Billy promises. Being without Victoria, wherever he may be, is Hell.

.

Billy still has nightmares that kind of screw with his head, but there are two vivid ones that are always there: the first one when he's trapped in Myanmar still, but he's reliving the day he gets arrested (there are still spots of black, and holes in his memories) while Billy waits for his sanity to snap in half. The second one could qualify with his head with Myanmar. He still isn't sure.

He stands in Newman Enterprises' longest hallway that seems to stretch for miles beyond what Billy can see with no end visible. It's maddening. Somehow, a shiny silver revolver is cool against his palm and his hands don't shake. They don't tremble. They don't hesitate. They know what to do because his finger is ready at the trigger and he's not afraid to squeeze it.

Billy just wants to shut Snidely up, because it's the same song and dance—that Victoria is too good for him. Victor says what he always does; Billy's a drunk, a compulsive gambler. He's slept with almost of the women in Genoa City and Victoria is beneath him.

Finally, Billy just shoots the Old Man dead through the heart, and there's silence.

Oh, well. That heart is never supposed to go into Victor in the first place. Colleen wouldn't want that.

Perhaps, Billy suffers some kind of mental mindfuck – maybe, a really small psychological break that will probably correct itself – with the trauma of Myanmar, and Delia nearly dying – that's why he dreams this. There's the silence of not hearing Victor's voice stretch every nerve Billy has. And there's the internal silence within Billy, himself where he doesn't feel anything at all. No relief. No panic. No numbness. Nothing at all.

.

Somewhere between being asleep and awake, Billy curses in his head.

And then curses Victor for good measure.

.

Billy wakes up, with Victoria curled into him with a contented sigh escaping from her lips.

He blinks once and scans where he is before the realization that he's far away from Myanmar and that his bone marrow saves his little girl's life. And then Billy glances down at Victoria, sleeping peacefully. Taking a hand, he gently runs the pad of his thumb over the smooth skin of her cheek.

Her eyes open, no make-up on her face yet a sleepy half-smile blooms on her face.

She takes her hand, puts on top of his.

Victoria whispers, voice still laced with sleep, "I missed this – when you touched me the way you are, right now," she snuggles into his embrace and allows his arms to curl over her slender waist. "Have I told you lately how much I love you lately?"

He pulls Victoria in, and presses and kiss to her temple, "Honey, lucky for you, the feeling is very mutual," and then Billy adds, sincerely, because Victoria still gives a damn about him, regardless. "I love you too."

.

Billy loves Victoria, and is really sorry: more sorry than she will know, or even understand. Though, sometimes, he can't quite understand it either.

* * *

_Smell_

.

The only way Billy knows he's in the right place is the smell of burnt cookies.

It lingers long after Victoria takes off her apron and Billy teases by suggesting the burnt cookies should be used as coasters, instead.

Victoria wants to be offended bit instead, she chuckles, "Yeah, those are bad."

.

The dog runs away (well, Keeley's always away of being adventurous and stuff but if anything happens to this dog, it's his head is on the Metaphorical Guillotine) and really, Billy is trying not to look like he's nervous.

And then, the lights die out and the generator has a mind of its own—Saxton can't get it to work.

There are no such things as omens. There are no such things as omens.

(Crap.)

.

Jack sees right through him and Genevieve is awfully perceptive for someone is who is about to become his sister-in-law, which makes Cane his nephew-in-law or something and there are no such things as omens and even if they are, Victoria shouldn't worry about it, because he loves her and she loves him and –

Oh, God, his brain is rambling.

"Billy, you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good, but – "

Genevieve replies, knowingly on Jack's arm, "You're nervous."

"Yeah," Billy answers, his skin the only thing keeping all of him in. "And I don't even know why because I love her and I've done this before."

Genevieve glances at Jack in questioning and asks if this happens with the same girl. Of, course it does, Billy thinks in his head.

Jack smiles, saying jokingly, "Yes, my brother is an overacheiver."

"You're hilarious, Jack, really," comes the good-natured response and really, Billy is grateful for his big brother. He reads, in Japan, somewhere between hanging out with Victoria and snooping around that big Victor-related bribe of hers, that it's a Japanese custom to have a really good close friend cut a person's head with a sword if the decapitated has essentially made an ass of themselves. Billy likes his head on his shoulders, thank you. But he wishes his palms wouldn't be as sweaty. "But Jack, here, is going to prop me up if I pass out."

And that's sort of a really big if between feeling like a groom all over again, and hoping Keeley turns up.

.

Okay, while the ceremony is about to start and Judge Anderson is about to marry him and Victoria for the second time, Billy makes a mental Why I Love Victoria in his head.

Billy loves her smile, the way her eyes light when something she makes her happy, her laugh, the way she intertwines her legs with his in bed when they spoon, the way she dances when she has no rhythm whatsoever but doesn't care, the big size of her heart even when there are patches of trademark ice that can be thawed out, her love for Reed and Delia ("Daddy, I love you. And Mommy. But my heart makes space for Victoria, too," Delia tells him in the car on the way to the Chancellor Mansion. "I love Victoria, lots.") because she loves him enough, her hair, the way Victoria kisses him, the way she smells when he presses a kiss to her bare shoulder and collarbone.

Delia walks up the aisle as the flower girl after Nikki, with Chloe's help.

The double door opens, and Billy isn't nervous anymore: because there she is, walking down the aisle on Nick's arm (like the second time), and partly because Keeley bursts in.

.

Now, it's really a wedding with the dog here – and it smells like matrimony.

* * *

_Taste_

.

"I know the guests and the bride and groom are more than ready for this to begin, so do you two have anything you'd like to say to one other?" Judge Anderson questions.

Billy wants this third and final marriage to go right. So, he's gonna to start. Because he has so much to say – so much to make right and there's still this nagging need to make amends.

He's screwed up so many times, but standing in this space with Victoria, is still the best thing he's done. It's the smartest thing he ever does, and Billy promises to himself, her and maybe, even the Big Guy not to mess this up. The stakes are too high, and none of it makes sense without her by his side.

So, Billy is going to first this time.

"Do you mind if I go first?"

"No," Victoria replies with a small nod, stunned as a surprised smile appears on her face.

He has absolutely no idea where to start because Billy understands that his journey with Victoria is light and dark, happy with a lot bit of sadness and anger; words they said they say to each other when it's good and the ones Billy and Victoria say to each other because they're angry but don't mean. But the journey brings them here.

"I don't know how else to say it. I love you," and then he says it, again because it's the truth. "I love you. And I have done some stupid stuff in my life, and the dumbest was leaving you alone. That landed me squarely in Hell, not because of the accommodations," he says, a flash of that small Myanmar prison passing by in Billy's mind, but not as far away as he wants it to be, "but because I wasn't with you," he pauses, looking into her blue eyes that are shiny with tears. "I'm not going anywhere else. This wedding, it's it. We're not doing this again. This is meant to be. This is kismet. It's been blessed by the dog," Billy adds, elicit a light chuckle with Victoria. "It's not going to end in any of us going to jail, or me leaving. It's just you and me forever, because we're meant to be."

.

She says things about how she's a businesswoman, has a family and friends and really, that's supposed to be enough.

But it's messed up, and just as dark for her, as it him when she's away from him—that's it's wrong and messy and yeah, she's sad and lonely when he disappears and breaks her heart.

Victoria says that she's more herself with him, then she is without him.

She doesn't need anything – just him, and them.

And that makes Billy smile, but he wants no one but her, either.

"This is my happiness. Thank you so much for giving it back to me," Victoria says, finally.

Billy wants to, in return, wants to thank her for taking him as he is.

(They're still Jim and Margaret Anderson to the end.)

.

Tattooed rings still remain, and Judge Anderson muses that it's good thinking.

.

"Do you take each other, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow as long as you both shall live?"

"We do." And they laugh, because spontaneity is sort of their thing.

Billy just wants to keep going on this crazy, insane adventure with Victoria; maybe, they're Bonnie and Clyde too – without the deadly shootout, of course. It would mess up the whole forever concept and Billy can't have that.

"By the power vested in me, by the state of Wisconsin, I now pronounce you husband and wife again. Haven't you two waited enough?"

Billy leans, and kisses his wife.

Victoria smiles against his lips, and she tastes like forever.

.

The lights come back on.

* * *

**A/N: I'm on a Villy-related tangent this days and the lack of screentime just forced myself to spew this out. I used the five senses as a template. Hopefully, it was good, so yeah – as always, feedback is love. Oh, and if you could check out my "Meteor Showers", I would appreciate that as well.**

**Thank you, **

**-Erika**


End file.
